


Ampersand

by levendis



Category: Law & Order: Criminal Intent
Genre: Cheating, F/M, Minor Violence, Secret Relationship, Unhealthy Relationships, not as dour as the tags imply, oldfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-17
Updated: 2015-02-17
Packaged: 2018-03-13 12:31:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3381623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A (mostly) honest examination of the pros and cons of sleeping with your partner. Comedy, sort of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ampersand

  
They've been doing this for about four weeks now. She figures four weeks is too long to just be a mistake, too long to forget about comfortably. Too long to be laughed off. There is a history of this, now, whatever this really is; there's motive and intent and cover-ups, witnesses, cell phone records. She'd arrest herself with the evidence she has. Four weeks and she knows they're fucked, and she also knows that when he shows up on her doorstep tonight, she'll let him in.  
  
  
  
Day one (of whatever this is) went like this: bad case, one neither of them could help taking personally, one of those cases where the job just sucked and why didn't she become a teacher or a manager of a mid-priced restaurant and why didn't he take that offer from the FBI? One of those cases that had both of them on a knife's edge and at the bar after they'd locked that fucker up she downed a few G&Ts and hated Goren more with each one and he did his impression of a black hole, the sad-bastard routine getting more and more grating as the night went on. And then afterwards spilling out onto the sidewalk with the rest of the last-call drunks she discovered all the frustration and rage and repressed _whatever_ of the past four years piling up behind her fist and then she had the strange experience of watching herself punch her partner in the face.  
  
" _Fuck_ ," he'd said, hand to his mouth. She couldn't believe she'd actually been able to reach. "Eames, what the hell was that for?"  
  
"Everything," massaging her knuckles. "Nothing. Let me clean that up for you."  
  
So they ducked back in (or she dragged him in, hand tight on his wrist like he was a perp) and squeezed into the single-person bathroom where she began waving a damp paper towel over his face like she was trying to clean off the top of her ceiling fan.  
  
"I'm sorry," he said.  
  
"You're not supposed to apologize to someone who's just punched you."  
  
"I guess I deserve it, though. I mean the timing is off, I thought we'd... but if I were you I'd be punching me too."  
  
"Shut up, Goren." She wiped the last of the blood off his mouth and kept wiping and then introduced a thumb brushing over his lips because apparently her hormones were fucked at the minute, and the next thing that happened was his hands on her shoulders and then her back against the wall and he was leaning all of his not inconsiderable weight into a bruising, teeth-clicking kiss and they were making out in the grimy bathroom of a shitty bar.  
  
Once the initial rush had passed they both realized they were _making out_ in a _public restroom_ and they were _partners_ , for fuck's sake. They did not go home together (despite Goren's previous frequent fantasies where he saved her life and they exchanged declarations of love and then fucked, or the sexual tension came to a head in a 3 AM empty bullpen and they exchanged declarations of love and then fucked, or any number of imaginative, nearly poetic variations that each involved Eames' panties flying off at the drop of a hat).  
  
She poured herself into a subway car and sat slumped in the way-too-bright light thinking alternately of A) the last time she'd been kissed that hard, which had been in college during the brief period of time she dated a cokehead creative-writing major in a fit of rebellion; B) what if Ross finds out, oh God; C) the likelihood of vomiting at any point tonight; and D) Goren. Fucking _Goren_.  
  
Goren, who was at the moment walking home in a nearly-straight line, counting the cement blocks beneath his feet, head suffused in a warm glow of _it really happened!_ that was paused when he couldn't seem to make the _key_ go into the fucking _hole_ goddamnit Goren _open the door_ and then as soon as he got in he sat down right there because the nearest chair was so, so far away, and instead of the warm glow he started to feel the unease of _it shouldn'ta happened_ which stayed with him until he finally passed out.  
  
  


*

  
  
  
Day two went over like a lead balloon. A hangover is no good for anyone's day. He woke up with his face pressed against the linoleum, feeling indescribably gross, and lurched up to cram as many Alka-Seltzers into his mouth as would fit. He made coffee, showered, put on one of his many blue-striped shirts (he really needed to stop buying the same thing over and over) and rummaged for food until he remembered that he'd thrown out most of it with the aim of getting his fat lazy ass back on track and the only thing left was vegetables and frozen chicken. Whatever, he'd stop at the diner on his way in. He drank a cup of coffee staring at the wall, wondering what would happen next. Wondering if this was another fuck-up or maybe, maybe something good.  
  
She, on the other hand, woke up feeling fine; it was only until she'd finished scrambling her eggs that her stomach started turning over. Re-hydrate, she thought. That's the ticket. A glass of orange juice and the eggs and slightly burnt toast later, she felt alive if not sparkling. Good enough.  
  
Goren was there before her, and she had to admit that one of the positive things about always looking a little bit crappy was that a hangover was less detectible. The key here was to act normal, she knew, so she said Hi and he said Hi and they smiled, awkwardly, and dug into the mountain of post-case paperwork.  
  
Ross slouched past around 11 and gave them a hang-dog look, paused, took a sip from his #1 Dad mug, paused again, asked "How're you two doing?"  
  
"Fine," they said in not-quite-unison. "Fine," she said again. "Fine," he repeated. "Completely fine," she emphasized.  
  
Ross carefully raised his left eyebrow and took another sip of coffee. "That's good to hear. When you're finished with this, take whatever's left of the day off."  
  
" _Completely fine_ ," Goren mimicked as soon as Ross was out of hearing range. "Maybe we should send him a card. 'Everything is very okay! Promise!'. We can't - we can't be like this."  
  
She was torn between being ticked off and thrilled that Goren hadn't totally lost his sense of humor, so she almost didn't notice the words coming out of her mouth - "You shoulda thought of that last night."  
  
Boom. There he went, like she was Gorbachev and he was the Berlin Wall. Because what we all need right now is a new reason for Goren the Martyr to flog himself into self-pitying bits. Thanks, Eames. So she swallowed up the last few dregs of spite and bitchery and gave him a Look that she hoped conveyed all the complex emotions she was feeling right then but probably just looked like she was disappointed. Or constipated.  
  
"I didn't, you're right. And I'm sorry for that. We should, we - " He rubbed at his chin scruff with the palm of his hand. "We gotta be professional about this. Move on. One more mistake won't kill this partnership."  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  
Moving on is relative and different for each person in each situation. Step one is keep your mouth shut, and step two is a bottle of cheap Australian red, and step three is hope it eventually sticks.  
  
Goren mentally catalogued That Night as one of his many issues and buried it somewhere next to Murdered Brother and Family History of Schizophrenia. He was running out of space in there. (In one late-night bout of the drunk mopes he'd correlated the derailment of his life with his physical decline and discovered the diet tip that would revolutionize the world and make him a million dollars, which was _don't keep it all inside_. He woke up the next morning and realized that what had seemed like a new spectacular type of physics was now revealed to be Oprah-level pop psychology. He tried to not be too embarrassed for himself.)  
  
Eames, she was doing great. Put it all behind her. Totally, completely fine. She took her nephew to the movies and took herself to a club wearing a modestly sexy dress and the shoes that made her ass look fantastic and flirted with a guy who looked like a ginger Anderson Cooper because clearly all she needed was to stop cloistering herself. What happened was misplaced sexual tension. That's all. She was doing so great she dragged Goren into a dark corner of the parking garage at 1PP and attacked him, getting his belt undone and her tongue in his mouth before she came to her senses.  
  
"I thought we were moving on," he said as he re-situated himself.  
  
"Yeah, I'm having a little trouble with that."  
  
"You don't say."  
  
"Do you want - " She shouldn't say this. She really, really shouldn't. "Do you want to come over tonight?"  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  
The answer to that was obviously 'yes, but', except the 'but' got lost and its attending sensible argument went with it. He sped home and stood in the middle of his apartment for a few moments trying to remember what to do. Shower, shave, fix hair. He changed his blue-striped shirt for another blue-striped shirt (seriously, gotta stop buying those) and the jeans for a pair of slacks he ironed into razors; combed his hair back and then rumpled it up (Guido is not a good look for you) and then aimed for some mix of the two, stopping himself only when he remembered he didn't want to explain that he was late because he couldn't get the fashionably-mussed look just right.  
  
Eames greeted him with a rueful smile, which he took to be a good sign. He stood in the living room with his arms held awkwardly, like he was holding imaginary flowers and chocolate.  
  
"I made us dinner," she called out. So domestic. Dinner and imaginary flowers. He navigated his way to the kitchen, noting all the kitsch Americana that still littered the walls, despite being utterly un-Eamesian. Unless that was a heretofore unexplored aspect of her personality, wooden Betsy Ross flags with artificial patina.  
  
"Sandwiches, sorry, nothing fancy."  
  
"Don't apologize, they look great."  
  
They smiled at each other.  
  
"Do you wanna - "  
  
" - Eat them, yes."  
  
They chuckled nervously and then proceeded to eat as slowly as reasonable, each grappling with the eternal question of dinner dates, which is, what happens when you stop eating?  
  
The first thing that happens is you clean the dishes, handling them as if they were infinitely precious, drying each with care and precision. The second thing is you stare at your partner looking for cues: is now the right time? Is here good? Or over there? Is the bedroom too serious? How about the couch?  
  
He was weighing the pros and cons of using the bed when she blindsided him, knocking him into the couch and straddling him. "Hands behind your head," she whispered harshly into his ear. "Yes Ma'am," he whispered back.  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  
After that it was like they'd both given in, the more complicated issues shoved aside in favor of questions like what time tonight? and how do we dodge Ross? For once Eames was glad Logan left; Nichols had a habit of shoving his nose into other people's business but Logan would have been a bitch (and a shame) to trick. Wheeler had her impending baby and the new-partner jitters, and she didn't notice when Goren made an idiot comment about the wallpaper in Eames' bedroom. Even Ross had Rodgers and their not-particularly-secret thing. He was working his own office romance, he wouldn't see someone else's. So they hoped. And she felt like she was slipping into the cracks of this department, settling into their secret, these new routines. Level-headed and businesslike on the job, except for those glances she couldn't suppress, or how his hand kept landing on her elbow or shoulder or the small of her back. Calm and collected and driving alone to their separate apartments. Then meeting: at her place or his, either way dispensing with dinner and basic pleasantries, kick the door shut, hand in his hair, tugging him down hard. Every once in a while stopping to think _Hey isn't it weird having your partner eat you out?_ or _this can't last forever._  
  
This couldn't last forever. "We should probably talk," she said.  
  
"Could we wait? Just a little bit?" He burrowed deeper into the blankets, closer to her. "I like this part. Don't ruin it."  
  
"What part?"  
  
"This," his voice muffled. "Just being here. With you. No - no violence, no planning. Just being with you."  
  
Sappy bastard. She'd be damned if he was going to make her cry. "I wouldn't call it violence."  
  
"I got scratches that say otherwise. It's - it's good, fantastic, I love it, but it hurts. All of this hurts."  
  
"Bobby - "  
  
"Shhh," as he wrapped an arm over her stomach and tucked his head under her chin. "Later."  
  
  


*

  
  
  
It's been four weeks, and they don't talk about it. She knows he's in love with her. He hasn't said anything (they don't talk about it) and he does his best to hide it, but he keeps slowing down at odd moments, being gentle where she's asking for rough, eyes wide and unblinking and focussed totally on her. Hands sweeping lightly over her face and she pulls them down to somewhere more obvious and he's back on track again, employing a sizable arsenal of tricks, looking at parts of her, but not her altogether.  
  
She wonders if she's using him. She cares for him, of course she cares for him. He's her partner. But maybe he expected dates and small gifts and snuggling on the couch watching PBS, slow explorations of each other; expected something besides her mid-life crisis energy and need. It's still worth it, she's got no real desire to stop; the sex is good and isn't that what this is about?  
  
She's decided she likes his size, likes the weight of him against her, the sense of accomplishment she feels at overcoming the obstacles inherent in combining such disparately proportioned people. Likes the sweetness of how loose-limbed and childlike he gets after a particularly energetic fuck, like he's a big cartoon teddy bear that hugs back. She likes him, and it's not love, but maybe it's good enough, and maybe he understands.  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  
(Every morning he wakes up with her, he waits a minute in between gathering his clothing and putting it on in the bathroom, watching her, in the dark. He figures a lot of people know her live-wire, sling-shot state. Perps, Ross, Logan, Nichols once when he misjudged her sarcasm threshold and called her a little lady. But this right here, this is a privilege and an honor, something he hopes he's the only one who sees. How small and soft and peaceful she looks, how young. Eames in motion, Eames at rest. He'd take pictures but pictures are evidence and they have too much of that already.)  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  
Ross congratulates her on bringing the partnership back together so neatly and it's all she can do to keep from crying. Back at their desks Goren is pawing through crime-scene photographs, wearing _Jesus Christ another blue-striped shirt_. She wonders if she could burn them without him noticing. It's not like he doesn't own other shirts, but he's gotta wear blue because he's so bluuue. Ross is giving her a look. She smiles brightly.  
  
Five weeks and it's them, all the time. Goren &Eames at work, Goren&Eames in bed, Goren&Eames carefully applying off-brand Band-Aids to each other, Goren&Eames ordering midnight takeout. She doesn't know what'll happen when she loses the Goren&, or what will happen to him when he loses the &Eames. Catastrophe, maybe. A slow descent into irreversible apathy. It's just that they've been like this for so long. The inseparable Goren&Eames.  
  
She detours to the coffee station and pours herself a cup of cold, weak coffee, dumps four packets of sugar in it, downs it in one revolting gulp and washes out the mug, running her finger along the edges to scrape off the gunk because she's not touching that sponge. Maybe she can't do this anymore. Maybe they should stop.  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  
"Don't settle for this," he says one night, breathless, sliding her skirt down her hips. "You deserve better. You should be in love with someone."  
  
"Who says I'm not in love with you?" But it comes out flip and unconvincing. He shoots her a look, which from this vantage point, his eyes turned up but his head facing her belly, is impossibly dark. Don't lie to me. Just don't.  
  
And oh, Bobby, why can't you just let things be? Some truths aren't worth knowing. Some lies are acts of mercy. Some lies hold everything together. She chokes back the beginning of his name as he goes down.  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  
One night he doesn't show up, and when she checks her messages it's just _I can't do this right now, I'm sorry, I'll see you tomorrow._ Fuck him, she thinks. From then on it's an Alex Night; she takes a bath with the miscellaneous remnants of three different bath salts and stays in until she starts to wrinkle up, then wraps herself in her softest robe and sits cross-legged on the couch, drinking Pinot Grigio from an improbably large glass, watching a James Bond marathon on tv. Secret agents and exploding pens, concealed side-arms, eyes only. Falling in love with the girl who invariably dies or leaves him before the credits roll, because James Bond is always single, that's how it works.  
  
Goren, who can't do this right now, is doing what he usually does when he can't do this right now, which is hulk over the end of the bar nursing a series of IPAs and breaking the monotony with shots of the house whiskey. A woman slides up to him around 10:30, probably the kind of woman who loves a fixer-upper.  
  
"You look like a man with a problem," she says. He grunts back. "Wanna talk about it?"  
  
He twirls the glass on the slick lacquered bar top. "Not talk, no." He slides his gaze slowly from her fingers drawing lines in the condensation of her beer, up her arms, breasts, neck, stopping at her eyes. He holds there as he finishes his beer.  
  
She's brunette and her name is Danielle, or Danica, or something like that; she lives in a second-floor walkup three blocks away, and she shudders when his tongue hits the back of her knee. She keeps a box of condoms in the bedside table's drawer and doesn't talk, just makes noises. He keeps his eyes closed.  
  
At midnight he leaves her sleeping, still putting his shoes on as he closes the door to her apartment, feels that awfulness pooling in the pit of his belly and growing up through his chest and into his throat, like if he opened his mouth right now his soul would just fall out.  
  
  


*

  
  
  
Six weeks and she wonders if maybe this can last forever. She's sliding towards 50 and this is the best thing she's got going. The best thing she's had in a while. What relationship is perfect? Who says you have to wait for true love? Maybe she should be satisfied with affection. Except Goren can be so hard to be with sometimes, these seemingly random moments where he just shuts down and deflects her like Teflon. Like she's not even there. And she's been scared once or twice by the anger he pretends he doesn't have anymore. She thinks he scares himself, too, which is almost worse.  
  
He's got family now, again, somehow (she doesn't really want to know); the picture of his niece makes her look like a miniature female version of him. A happy and rustic version. She can see him there, out of the city, surrounded by his inexplicable new family, living simply and away from all this.  
  
Goren, for his part, is astounded by the concept of a normal family, eating dinner together, holding hands and saying a prayer, passing dishes with a please and a thank you. He reminds himself not to get over-attached because that desperation for a connection was what landed him in Tates, and the complicated blood mechanics of their relation didn't bear thinking about. His niece is nine years old and that's a good age, the age when a kid has a personality but no issues yet. A trusting, loving age. He pictures himself taking her to playgrounds, tries out the role of uncle in his head, decides he can deal with it better than he could ever deal with being a father. He imagines having another set of people to lie to. He can't explain Eames to himself, let alone them. They're as fresh a start as he's ever likely to get. He can't ruin that. But he shows the picture to Eames with a weird sense of pride, almost nervous about it. _I have a life without you,_ he wants to say. _I won't be alone when you leave._  
  
  


*

  
  
  
She hits him again. This time he doesn't say anything. He'd started to try to break it off (this isn't fair, this isn't right), looking earnest and sad and she'd felt that hot prickling behind her eyes and the tell-tale thickness in her throat and so she hit him, square in the gut. He doubles over and breathes heavily for a while, massaging the section of pudge she'd just bruised.  
  
"I'm so sorry," she says, not having a clue what to do. Did she really just hit him? Did that happen?  
  
"Alex," he says, then stops. And she hears it, that heartsick confusion, hoarse and quiet. (All of this hurts, he'd said.) What is she _doing_?  
  
"I can't do this," he says again. "I love you, you - you know that. But I think I'd rather be alone."  
  
Poor, sweet, dumb, asshole Goren. She doesn't trust her voice not to break up and she doesn't trust her eyes not to water up like leaky, crybaby traitors so she clenches her teeth and stares past him, at that stupid Betsy Ross flag her mother pawned off on her. What the hell is she doing here.  
  
He reaches out and cups her jaw, brings her face around. She looks at the buttons on his shirt. (Maroon, thank God, and she laughs a little.) "Hey," he says, tilting down to meet her eyes. "Alex. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe one of these days, it'll make sense to, to be together. You know? But, it - doesn't make sense right now. And it's not fair to either of us."  
  
Since when did you get so sensible, she thinks. Since when are you the reasonable one.  
  
"We're doing great, at work. As partners. And, with a little work, I think we can keep that?"  
  
"Yeah," she says, all choked-up. She swallows hard, smiles up at him. "Yeah, sure we can."  
  
"Good," he says, and kisses her gently. That's the last time, she thinks. Last-ever, honest-to-goodness final time. It's not like she thought it wouldn't end (it took a while, but it did, it had to), it's not like she's in love with him. And this inertia, this gravity in her, this reluctance where relief should be, they'll pass. It'll pass. She pinches the bridge of her nose.  
  
"You okay?"  
  
She laughs again. "Yeah. Um, yeah, I'm fine."  
  
"Completely fine," he says. "I should - "  
  
"Of course." With a fair amount of restraint, she stops laughing (don't get hysterical now, Eames), and walks him to the door. Lets him squeeze her elbow in a gesture she thinks he means to be reassuring. Locks the door behind him. So that's it. Seven weeks, and it feels like years, and maybe it has been years.  
  
She'll see him tomorrow, bright and early, and he'll be there before her and she'll bring him coffee. And if they get another one of those cases (taking-it-personally, heart-on-sleeve, fuck-this-job cases), they'll share a drink afterwards, one drink, and then go home separately, because that's how it works. Saving the world and splitting up before the credits roll. That's all there is to it, really. Maybe that's enough.


End file.
